Weekend

I had a distinctly offline weekend. It was wonderful.

I brought a lamp my Dad had turned for me to a shop on Mount Pleasant. One of those stores so specialized you think, I'll be the only person there today. How many people in Toronto can possibly want a lamp rewired or a custom lampshade on a 30-degree Saturday? Lots, it turns out.

I love these moments when the world reminds you you're not special. Like at airports, when your own journey feels so singular and special and you get there and face the reality that hundreds, thousands of us have also chosen that day to get on airplanes for their reasons, likely not so different from your own. Sometimes being unspecial in these ways is also special.

And I walked back through the cemetery on the way back from the lampshade shop and looked at the gravestones. Mount Pleasant is my local park really — 83 hectares of graves dating back to the 1870's. Headstone patterns recur, names bob and weave. You start out wanting to register each one, but they're too much of a rich brocade. Graveyards and airports have something in common in that way. We feel so singular, and we're reminded we're not.

I don't know. The whole thing put me in this elated kind of mood. Maybe it was the sun or that I'm feeling more myself after recent decisions. Maybe it's just good to let go of that straining desire to be meaningful and to matter and instead just watch new freckles form in the sun, knowing they'll fade again come winter.